There’s a difference between ‘thoughtful’ and ‘wrong’

Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes.

It’s smug and predictable to pretend books are the equivalent of swords; it’s smug and predictable to cast anything one wants to sneer at as (somehow, and self-evidently) ‘extreme’; it’s smug and predictable to pretend that religion and atheism are really equivalent and each as bad as the other. It ought to be possible even to disagree with atheism without making that stupid stale untrue move, but apparently it isn’t, at least not for hacks. I would like Kristof not to be a hack, because he does good work, but this dreck is hackery.

…[D]evout atheists built mocking Web sites like www.whydoesGodhateamputees.com. That site notes that although believers periodically credit prayer with curing cancer, God never seems to regrow lost limbs.

And? How is that obviously an example of atheism as ‘extreme’? God never does seem to regrow lost limbs, so why isn’t that relevant? Kristof can’t be bothered to say, because he’s in too much of a hurry to say how good Karen Armstrong and Robert Wright are.

Karen Armstrong. Well that’s a sure sign of a mind that isn’t trying hard enough – anyone of adult years who thinks Karen Armstrong is good is not paying attention.

This year is different, with a crop of books that are less combative and more thoughtful…Karen Armstrong’s “The Case for God,” likewise doesn’t posit a Grandpa-in-the-Sky; rather, she sees God in terms of an ineffable presence that can be neither proven nor disproven in any rational sense. To Ms. Armstrong, faith belongs to the realm of life’s mysteries, beyond the world of reason, and people on both sides of the “God gap” make the mistake of interpreting religious traditions too literally.

And that’s enough for her to be considered ‘thoughtful.’ A truly thoughtful reader of Armstrong (and other ‘God is ineffable’ types, for that matter) might manage to come up with the thought that a slippery non-literal but still named ‘God’ God is a very useful dodge for theists in a time of scientific education. But not Kristof – he just lets himself be snowed.

I’m hoping that the latest crop of books marks an armistice in the religious wars, a move away from both religious intolerance and irreligious intolerance. That would be a sign that perhaps we, along with God, are evolving toward a higher moral order.

There’s the banal false equivalence again. Such an armistice wouldn’t be a sign of any kind of moral advance, it would be an instance of the success of relentless bullying by false equivalence, that’s what. Well it won’t work, Mr Kristof – the more you call us things that we’re not, the more irritated and stubborn we get. So get used to the ‘war.’

14 Responses to “There’s a difference between ‘thoughtful’ and ‘wrong’”

If this debate is any indication, Wright’s primary intellectual virtue is his ability to empty our heads of any relevant intuitions or doubts. All I get from his talks is this vague feeling of “hooray for people”. He’s like the Wolf Blitzer of punditry.

Well, Ms Armstrong is very much allowed to have her God be ineffable, unprovable and forever lost in the gaps of knowledge, but then she’d better not turn around and claim to be a Christian, or allow herself to be counted as a “believer” by Christians, or even say a single thing about what that ineffable deity supposedly wants or wants not to happen.

It seems to all coverge toward a something-moreism- about finding a way to dismiss straightforward questions about self-evident problems, as either strident, or shallow, or oversimplifying. Whatever can be done to characterize the object of criticism as mushied up with intangibilities that would delay or render improbable a moment of introspection on the part of someone being criticised for their unreflective faith.

Ben,

I watched that debate, felt that there was some sort of egocentricity to Wright’s position. He sets himself up as above the fray, criticizing both equally and therefore having a claim of higher disinterestedness than the other participants. He frequently made reference to the fact that he was on neither side, the fact that both sides should be criticized.

Perhaps Ophelia could say it better than I, but there is something profoundly empty about criticizing amorphous groups for ambiguous crimes of stridence. This serves as primarily as a prop, so that guys like Wright can say that both parties are guilty of equal excesses. This represents a fundamental failure to return to the overarching context and stand these foibles against the substantial and real societal damage that is being criticized. The closest iconic reference point I can identify this behavior with is the middle ground fallacy, but I’m not quite sure that captures what Robert Wright is.

This serves as primarily as a prop, so that guys like Wright can say that both parties are guilty of equal excesses. And the point of saying both are guilty is to releive those with unreflective faith from feeling the heat of criticism.

It doesn’t stop them from being criticized, but centering shifts the narrative gravity and the overall effect is relief from criticism.

I did my best to be polite; here was my comment (#344) to Nicholas Kristof’s column:

Mr. Kristof, you wrote, “I’m hoping that the latest crop of books marks an armistice in the religious wars, a move away from both religious intolerance and irreligious intolerance.”

An armistice on whose terms? I don’t want to return to the days (which some say have never left us) when most of the time, most people in most societies consider religious ideas to be immune from the critical scrutiny that is applied to all other realms of human culture and behavior. This phenomenon was one of the factors at work in (1) allowing the Roman Catholic hierarchy to cover up sexual abuse of children by priests for decades and (2) the reluctance of senior U.S. Army brass and psychiatrists to be react more sensibly to the disturbing reports at Walter Reed about Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

I have no problem with “tolerance,” and with practicing respect for people and their rights. But ideas and beliefs do not automatically deserve respect — especially if those ideas can be couched in religious terms. The people who traffic in religious ideas (clergy, theologians, apologists, and writers such as Karen Armstrong) unfortunately have gotten used to demanding — and getting — more than just “tolerance” from non-believers and from the vast numbers of people who pretend to be religious out of fear or guilt or a herd mentality.

No, the proponents and defenders of religious ideas (most of which are nonsense, and some of which are dangerous, poisonous nonsense) usually want more than live-and-let-live tolerance. The Karen Armstrongs, Terry Eagletons, Rick Warrens, and the lobbyists for the U.N. Resolution 62-154 on “defamation of religions” seem to be counting on the continued operation of what Simon Blackburn has called “respect creep.” Non-believers and skeptics are drawn — or dragged — from live-and-let-live tolerance to fellow feeling, deference, and finally reverence and silent obedience. Leave me out of it.

May I point out that I’m totally above the argument. There are atheistic excesses – like launching mocking websites like Why Does God Hate Amputees? – and theistic excesses – like raping small children. Thus, because of the balance of their sins, I choose an enlightened agnosticism, based wholly on my knowledge of Internet debating techniques, the publishing market and a few websites I’ve browsed recently. I absolutely know that atheists and theists alike are wrong, so I am an agnostic!

“He notes that God, as perceived by humans, has mellowed from the capricious warlord sometimes depicted in the Old Testament who periodically orders genocides.”

Here is where they go wrong – God hasn’t “mellowed”. There is something we can all agree on – obviously, if God doesn’t exist, he can’t change any more than a non-existent unicorn can change. All the theists I know say God is unchanging and ineffable, so either he can’t change or we can’t know that he’s changed.

Some honesty would be nice. God is not changing, human beliefs are. This is something Nietzsche got right: if you are claiming that there is some thing which is completely absolute, showing some of the tangled history of the thing should serve to undermine it – showing the genealogy of the transcendent should be enough to undermine the transcendentality.

Kristof on Armstrong: “Her book suggests that religion is not meant to regrow lost limbs, but that it may help some amputees come to terms with their losses.”

Wasn’t there a study published recently about false hope and terminal illnesses?

Kristof on ‘The Faith Instinct’: “humans may be programmed for religious belief, because faith conferred evolutionary advantages in primitive times. That doesn’t go to the question of whether God exists, but it suggests that religion in some form may be with us for eons to come.”

I love that people are pushing this as if it somehow contradicts what us non-fearing atheist types are saying. I’d say that the fact that humans are “programmed for religious belief” does go into the question of the truth or falsity of religious belief. As if it’s totally impossible to say that religion is both false and has a really complex, interesting history and scientific explanation. I mean, it’s not like Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” is all about how we need to scientifically study religion to uncover how it works and all the psychological, evolutionary and other scientifically-studiable phenomena that come bundled under that heading.

Thought experiment: substitute ‘God’ and ‘religion’ with rape in this silly debate and see what you get. You have Rape-Dawkins and Rape-Hitchens saying “Rape is bad, stop doing it”. You also get the Rape-McGrath (or the Rape-D’Souza or whoever) saying “No, no, rape is fine, carry on”. And then you get the Rape-Armstrong and Rape-Wright people saying “Well, we’re not going to pontificate on whether rape is okay or not because we can’t really ever know, so we should remain agnostic or kind of a rape-mystic about it, but, y’know, rape is really quite a complex sociological phenomena with centuries of history, and there are some people who think of rape as being a transcendent way of accessing their deeper selves and getting in touch with the mythos, rather than the dull logos of sexual violation and bla bla bla…”.

Sorry, I’ve got rape on the brain after watching all those Irish priests squirming around trying to apologise for covering up child abuse.

Comment #7 from Tom: “I am an evangelical fundamentalist who takes the Bible as the inspired word of God as He is revealed in the scriptures. That leads me to treat all men with tolerance and to know that I do not hold all the answers.”

Wow, compartmentalize much?!

Comment #12 from Robin T.: “I disagree with Dawkins, et al, because I think that human beings need symbols, imagery and words in which to express and encourage such ideas. Atheism is materialism, and materialism leaves out most of what makes humans human.”

Materialists like Dawkins hates poetry and symbols and art and humanity. That must be why Dawkins waxes poetic about the wonders of the universe so often. Wonders and poetry that obvously don’t exist for us soulless, barely human materialists.

No it isn’t. Atheism is the absence of belief in one kind of supernaturalism. It is possible not to accept arguments for the existence of God but be happy that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.

“materialism leaves out most of what makes humans human”

These shiny disks are just physical matter and so they cannot contain music or movies.

The major problem with the type of ineffable, indefinable god proposed by Armstrong (and Terry Eagleton, for that matter) was pointed out years ago by Feuerbach: “The denial of determinate, positive predicates concerning the divine nature is nothing else than a denial of religion…it is simply a subtle, disguised atheism”. Basically, if you posit a subject but deny that it has determinate predicates, you really don’t have a subject at all. Their position therefore collapses into atheism, and there are no grounds for dispute.

Why it is acceptable for certain religious believers and nonbelievers like Nicholas Kristof and Josh Rosenau to tell others how to be a religious believer or nonbeliever, but not for others like Ken Ham or Richard Dawkins.

Many claim we should not question the religious beliefs of a Ken Miller or John Haught because these individuals accept evolution. If their religion institutionalizes the subjugation of women or denies the efficacy of condoms in preventing HIV infection or demonizes homosexuality, we just need to respect it without comment. We cannot have any evolution supporters who are religious believers offended. But, can a nonbeliever expect reciprocation from these individuals? Would they defend the morality or suitability for public office of a nonbeliever as equivalent to that of a believer? If one of their sons or daughters concluded science was incompatible with religious belief and became a nonbeliever, would they accept it or would they try to subvert science to prevent apostasy?

Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books.

Jesus, you’d think they had never heard of 9/11. Or Bush stating that God told him to invade Iraq.

No respect for Armstrong. I could at least respect her position if she occasionally fired salvos at believers who are “doing it wrong” according to her, but she just levels attack after attack at the acceptable atheist targets in order to sell books making quasi-religious people feel justified in their beliefs.